U.S.- Germany Cooperative Research: Process Chains for the Replication of Complex Optical Components: High Resolution Surface Zone Analysis

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0128050LuccaThis award supports Don Lucca and students from the Oklahoma State University in an extensive collaboration with the universities of Aachen and Bremen in Germany. The project will focus on discovering what factors are generating the new wave of high-tech The resulting U.S.-Germany Transregional Collaborative Research Center involves sixteen technical projects centered on the development of processes for the manufacture of complex, high-quality optical components for next generation applications in information technology and telecommunications, health care, the life sciences, sensing, lighting, and energy conversion. There are technical projects in the areas of deign, had coatings, replication techniques, and measurement science and technology. Funding for this long-term research center, with the exception of the project here described, is being supplied mainly by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the German counterpart to NSF. The research focus of the U.S. project, "High Resolution Surface Zone Analysis," is the investigation of the near-surface mechanical nature of sol-gel derived diamond-turnable, hard mold coatings which will be used in the volume production of ultraprecision optics of polymers and glasses. Nanoindentation will e used to study the near-surface mechanical properties including elastic modulus and hardness, and the surface residual stress state of the hard coatings. Depth profiling studies will e performed on cross-sectioned and taper-sectioned coatings with a newly developed method for near surface zone analysis. The adhesion and delamination behavior of the mold coatings will be explored with the use of nanoscratching. The project will also further contribute to the development of advanced surface characterization tools needed for assessing the near-surface mechanical state at the nanometer scale.